


a summer sort of girl

by cautiouslyoptimistic



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cautiouslyoptimistic/pseuds/cautiouslyoptimistic
Summary: lena doesn't like the cold but she doesn't seem to notice it when kara's aroundor, kara is lena's own personal sun





	

**Author's Note:**

> originally from tumblr @forlornlyoptimistic. now here too!!

i.

 

It feels colder in National City than it ever did in Metropolis. She’s not altogether sure why. It’s almost as if the wind is sharper, as if the sun’s rays only barely manage to reach the skyline of the city, their warmth being snatched away by the girl in the cape. Sometimes, as she walks to L-Corp ( _her_ building she reminds herself forcefully), she thinks the trees shiver in the breeze and their leaves chatter in the cold as they fall to the ground, crushed by commuters who remain oblivious to their screech of pain.

Then again, her mother has always said she has quite the imagination (and an unfortunate flair for the dramatics).

Lena smiles to herself as she checks her make-up one last time, unnecessarily straightening her dress, wiggling her toes in her heels. Lex had always called her pre-meeting preparations her ‘body armor.’ It was a façade, he would grin, hand on her shoulder. It was a defense. (The truth is a little more nuanced—after all, she has learned that the best defense is a killer offense.)

She pulls on her coat, mentally preparing herself for the onslaught of chilly air she will face outside, and leaves her building for the lunch meeting. They were a few of Lex’s old contacts, men who believed she would honor her brother’s deals with them. From the few calls she’d already had with them, they thought her an easy target, someone they could manipulate in order to become richer—someone they felt they could threaten or scare into falling in line.

In short, they were fools.

As the light for pedestrians turns green, Lena numbly follows the crowd of commuters to the other side of the street, straggling a bit behind. Her thoughts are on her plans for Lex’s contacts and on her mother’s recent strange behavior. (Though, to be perfectly frank, she’s not quite sure why she cares: her mother has always been strange and has always had an overt preference for Lex. If anyone needed to take care of her, it should be _his_ responsibility.) Lena’s mind is on everything, really, except on the car that comes hurtling down the street, traffic laws and speed limits utterly forgotten.

She looks up at the sound of a car’s horn, braces herself (though she’s not quite sure for what, impact? death? release?), and feels her feet lift off the ground.

(For a second she wonders if this is what dying feels like, weightless and warm, but then the sounds of the street come back to her.)

“It’s always men who drive like that,” comes a voice from right behind Lena’s head, the warmth disappearing as Lena’s feet touch the ground once more. She turns, unsurprised to see Supergirl standing there, her brow furrowed as she studies the car that had veered into a lamppost instead of slamming into Lena. “I don’t know why,” she mutters, shaking her head, finally turning to face Lena, a smile on her face. “I’m glad you’re okay, though. You should probably be more careful as you cross the street.”

“Thank you, Supergirl,” Lena says, the words not seeming like they’re enough, though they’re all she can think so say.

“I guess we’re even now,” Supergirl laughs, hands on her hips. “You saved me at the Gala, I saved you from a car.” Lena forces a laugh, her practiced smile finding its way onto her lips, something she falls back on the second she feels unsure or afraid. (And she is both unsure and afraid of Supergirl.)

(She’s not quite sure why.)

“I’ll see you around, Ms. Luthor,” Supergirl says, and she’s gone, leaving behind only a gust of wind in her wake.

And, for whatever reason, the wind feels warm.

 

ii.

 

The first time Kara does it, Lena writes it off as a friendly gesture. She _likes_ Kara (more than she probably should, actually), and she values their friendship. It’s not that it’s hard for her to make friends, she never really had trouble with it growing up, it’s that she’s no longer sure she’s quite sure what it means to have a friend.

And Kara—well, Kara listens and smiles and pays attention, asking about how Lena is doing and not about how much money she made in the last quarter.

Kara is a _friend_ , Lena knows that. And friends visit unexpectedly, bringing lunch with them. It’s not a big deal. (At least, not the first time. Not even the second or third time. But when Kara had invited herself over for lunch everyday for about a week, Lena couldn’t help but feel…well, feel _something_.)

“He’s just so… _mean_ ,” Kara is saying, waving her fork in the air, eyebrows scrunched together as if she’s trying to think of something worse than ‘mean’ and is falling short. “I am a reporter. I _am_.”

“You are,” Lena agrees, quelling that _something_ that surges when she looks at Kara. She dabs her mouth with her napkin as she fights to regain control of her emotions. “Is that why you come here for lunch everyday? To escape Snapper?”

“Oh, well. I mean…ha ha,” Kara says, ducking her head and playing with her glasses. “I just thought…well….” She trails off, seemingly unwilling or unable to finish her thought. Concerned, Lena puts her fork down and leans towards Kara, placing a hand on her elbow, hoping this would give her a measure of comfort. If anything, Kara looks more unsettled that before, her eyes darting around the room, focusing on anything and everything but Lena.

“You know you can tell me anything, right Kara?”

“I thought if you had lunch with someone it might make sure you actually eat, that’s all.” She says it quickly, as if the faster she gets it out, the faster Lena would drop the subject. But all Kara’s words do is make her feel another surge of that _something_ (she thinks the feeling falls somewhere between suspicion and affection, though naturally, she’s unable to figure out which), leading to a small smile—a _genuine_ smile—tugging at her lips.

“That’s very sweet,” Lena says, squeezing Kara’s elbow before releasing her. “I have been a bit distracted lately.” Kara mumbles something under her breath, something that sounds a lot like _I know_ , which Lena is sure is a figment of her overactive imagination, naturally. After all, how would _Kara_ know?

(Kara, who she smiled at and talked to, who she told about Lex, but not her mother’s darkness or the fear that traces her every step: that she too is destined to be like the other Luthors.)

“Whatever it is, you know you can talk to me, right?” Kara asks slowly, carefully, hesitantly, like she’s afraid Lena might find the offer unattractive, a breach of the boundaries they’ve so carefully constructed around each other. (Lena doesn’t talk about her fears, and Kara refuses to speak about her own.)

“Thank you, Kara,” Lena says after a silence that stretches a moment too long, ensuring that Kara sees how utterly _tempting_ her offer is. “But lunch with you everyday is enough. You’re a lifesaver.”

Kara only smiles at her in response, but from that moment, Lena is unable to shake off that _something_ she feels whenever Kara is near.

 

iii.

 

She doesn’t like snow until she sees the look of joy on Kara Danvers’ face the night National City gets a dusting of the white fluff.

Kara’s daily lunches with her had inevitably come to a stop. Lena had a business to run, and while she knew Kara disapproved, marketing the alien detection technology was important—something Lena was quite determined to make sure everyone had access to. And Kara…well, Kara always seemed to be in a rush to go somewhere. She was a reporter, racing wherever her leads took her.

But though the lunches ceased, Lena found excuses to see Kara rather regularly, aided by the fact that Kara was always doing something she thought Lena would enjoy. So instead of a hurried lunch hour, the two of them would spend one or two evenings a week together. (And if Kara left early inconveniently often, Lena understood. Her sister was going through a rough time—if Lena though Lex could still be saved, no force on earth would have been strong enough to drag her away from him.)

Tonight, however, Kara had sat through the entire documentary, eyes wide as she chewed on popcorn and listened to the narrator drone on about aquatic life. Her focus had been on the screen, Lena’s had been on Kara, and when Lena had walked Kara out, Kara had the same childlike reaction to the snow as she’d had to coral reefs: glee.

It’s cold and Lena thinks she may need two or three more sweaters just to brave the chill, but she laughs when Kara stares up at the sky with an open mouth, she ducks her head to hide her pink cheeks when Kara grabs her by the hand and forces her to help make ‘the world’s tiniest snowman.’

It’s cold and Lena has always hated the cold, but that _something_ stirs in her chest, and her skin is warm wherever Kara’s fingers have brushed it, and she’d brave snowstorms and blizzards if it only meant seeing Kara smile.

 

iv.

 

Spring creeps up on her, something she’s not quite sure has ever happened. Winters always seemed so long and so harsh that she documented every single change in temperature, grinning like a fool when the world flooded with green once more.

But she found that when she was among Kara and her friends—out drinking beers or settled on Kara’s couch, watching some random movie—she felt content and happy and _warm_ , and she didn’t count down the days until the flowers would begin to bloom again and the trees would stop looking so naked. Spending time with Kara and her friends (though she mostly gave credit to Kara alone) made barren winters seem not so devoid of life.

In all honesty, she can’t quite figure out the moment she knew the truth. It had been obvious for a while—Kara didn’t really make much of an effort to keep her excuses believable, and she always seemed to conveniently be absent whenever Supergirl was around—but Lena hadn’t wanted to accept it. And despite what Alex thinks, despite her knowing looks and distrustful glares, Lena is not angry or scared or upset that Kara Danvers is Supergirl. Her avoiding the truth has less to do with Kara’s status as an alien and more to do with her own insecurities and fears.

She knows who Kara really is, but she pushes the thought away, scared that her being a Luthor would be too much for Supergirl. She knows the truth, but she ignores it in a futile attempt to somehow make it untrue (as if her denial would change Kara’s DNA), because she has no idea if she would love Spring as much if Kara isn’t there to point out flowers and talk about bees.

She’s known about Kara for a while, known about Supergirl, but she keeps it to herself—keeps quiet—because she’s deathly afraid that that _something_ would be lost, that the cold would once more become unbearable.

Lena has just learned what it meant to be _warm_ , so when it looks like Kara is on the verge of telling her, Lena flees, and she finds herself feeling cold anyway.

 

v.

 

She’s hot and sweaty when she runs into Kara. The air conditioning in her building is faulty, the men she hired to fix the issue taking far too long, and so she had decided to take refuge in the coffee shop not too far from Catco. (She doesn’t dwell for too long on why that is.) But the day is muggy and even the short trek from her office to the coffee shop leaves her feeling disgusting. But Kara smiles wide when she sees Lena, her hands immediately going up to her glasses, looking like there’s no one she wanted to see more than Lena.

(And Lena, she feels that _something_ in her chest swell, feels her cheeks heat, feels her heart race, pounding against her ribs.)

“Lena, hey,” Kara begins awkwardly, still smiling. “You’re out of the office.” She sounds surprised, and she should be. Lena had practically barricaded herself in her office for the past several months, going longer and longer without seeing Kara, trying to wean herself off the drug that was Kara’s smile. (It didn’t help that Kara was tenacious and refused to let Lena mope. It didn’t help that her assistant let Kara up without question. It didn’t help that Kara was… _Kara_.)

“Air conditioning is broken,” Lena explains, gesturing to the laptop and stacks of paper she’s carrying. “I came here to work.”

“Okay, go sit. I’ll get you an iced tea.”

“That’s really not—”

“Go sit,” Kara pushes, grinning slightly. Less than ten minutes later, Lena finds herself at a table, sipping on an iced tea, Kara sitting across from her, a wide smile on her face. “So…” she begins, “how’re you?”

“I know I’ve been distant. I’m sorry. It’s just—” She cuts herself off when she noticed Kara is shaking her head.

“You don’t need to explain anything to me,” she says, straightening her glasses. “I mean, I would like you to. But knowing that you’re okay is enough. For me, that is. You should probably talk to someone. Not me! Unless you want to. Am I making sense?” she finishes lamely, looking at Lena with a bashful expression.

And that _something_ suddenly has a name. (Honestly, she should’ve seen it coming.)

“Actually,” she says slowly, for once not thinking things through, for once not letting the name Luthor and her own fears control her actions, “there is something I want to tell you. But first, tell me what you’ve been up to. Leave nothing out.”


End file.
